A prominent liberal firm dumped roughly 500 pages of opposition research on Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) on Monday ahead of his expected entry into the 2024 presidential election.
American Bridge 21st Century, a leading left-leaning research firm, did a deep dive into DeSantis over the past year, gathering a slew of material against him, and unveiled its findings on its website, seeking to cast him as a “MAGA extremist.” The move highlights how much Democrats view the Florida governor as a threat.
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“Ron DeSantis’ justification for running for president is what he calls the Florida Blueprint. But facing crisis after crisis in the state, DeSantis failed to rise to the occasion, and the results speak for themselves,” the group said on its website.
The documents walk through DeSantis’s record on numerous matters, such as abortion, Social Security, Medicare, and more. It also features a recap of various interviews DeSantis has given throughout his career in which he talked about the top issues of the day. The group divided its findings into various sections on its website.
Failures as governor
American Bridge argued that Florida is “one of the worst states in the nation” on child healthcare access, housing affordability, property insurance costs, and teacher pay.
“Numbers don’t lie. Under DeSantis, Florida was one of the worst states in the nation for child healthcare access, and had some of the highest health insurance premiums in the nation,” the group said. “School quality declined, and Florida became the least affordable state to live in in the country. Water quality also declined, while electricity prices went up.”
Notably, Florida has been dogged by hurricanes and extreme weather that contribute to property insurance costs. DeSantis has sought to address some of those problems in the upcoming state legislature session. But the firm argued that DeSantis’s stewardship over Florida’s hurricane response was also a failure.
“As an armchair politician in Washington, D.C., Ron DeSantis fought to delay and play partisan games with emergency disaster funding,” the group said. “And when he was called to provide leadership in the face of disaster himself, he dropped the ball, delaying needed evacuations and even running campaign ads during the crisis.”
One of the top issues that helped catapult DeSantis to national prominence was his restraint to enact COVID-19 suppression measures during the middle and later stages of the pandemic. American Bridge countered that his policies led to a “disastrous number of deaths and an unnecessary number of COVID cases.”
DeSantis’s alleged flip flops
The opposition research file lays out several instances in which DeSantis appeared to change his position on a host of issues, such as the war in Ukraine, COVID-19 vaccines, and more. The organization cited adjustments or clarifications DeSantis made on various issues.
One example given was how DeSantis backed aid to Ukraine during his time in Congress, but later argued in 2023 that getting entangled in a “territorial dispute” half a world away was not in the United States’s interests. DeSantis later clarified that he vehemently opposed the war and was rooting for Ukraine, but was opposed to sending U.S. troops to the region.
An “extremist on the issues”
Taking a page out of the attack playbook against former President Donald Trump, American Bridge sought to paint DeSantis as an “extremist,” citing his positions on abortion, the environment, trade, and unions, as well as highlighting his voting record from his tenure in Congress.
At one point, the group criticized DeSantis for voicing reservations about Trump’s decision to impose steep tariffs on China.
“While expressing support for Trump broadly, DeSantis expressed skepticism about Trump-era tariffs on steel and aluminum,” the group said. “DeSantis said the best approach would be as ‘temporary leverage,’ expressed concern for industries downstream of aluminum and steel production and retaliation.”
Trump has already begun taking aim at DeSantis over some of those matters, notably the Florida governor’s prior remarks on Social Security and Medicare. While in Congress, DeSantis voted multiple times to raise the retirement age and enact other changes to the two programs.
Given Trump’s dominance and DeSantis’s recent rise in the political arena, Democrats spent years stockpiling opposition research against the former president. In 2020, American Bridge released the Trump Research Book outlining its findings against Trump.
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A torrent of polls has pegged DeSantis in a distant second place in a hypothetical 2024 GOP primary, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling aggregate. Recent polling in the aftermath of the Trump indictment appears to show the former president expanding his lead.
DeSantis is not expected to launch his campaign until after the Florida legislature wraps up its session in May.
